


A Shady Night

by Ealasaid



Series: A City In Shadows [11]
Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mobsterswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few centuries of shady living allowed you to acquire certain skills, and if you’re not army-surgeon standard, you can at least dig out bullets and put stitches in more or less the right place. You just hope that nothing vital was hit even though that looks to be a near certainty, because you can’t do anything about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shady Night

You look at Scofflaw and what you were going to say completely falls out of your head because you’re too busy wondering with a sort of horror just how much blood he has, since it looks like he just stood for an hour outside in a thunderstorm raining red. A moment later half of it disappears, and you realize it was just the shadows and the fact that the light in your apartment isn’t good, but damn that is still a lot of blood.

The mobster is half collapsed against the wall, caught in an overall droop that turns into a slow slide as he loses the battle to stay upright. “Fuck, Scoff’,” you say in shock from your chair—he’d caught you eating dinner—and he jerks and looks at you with eyes of purple flame.

Scofflaw snarls and lurches in a weird movement as he half pulls out a pistol. He’s got absolutely no speed, though, so when it cracks in his grip you’ve already ducked under it and you’re knocking it out of his hand. The purple of his eyes disappears into a faded white, never a good sign. And then you’re under one arm and half supporting him as he sags and the wall isn’t enough to hold him up.

“Scoff’ what the hell  _happened_?” you demand, angry at how your heart is knocking against your ribs. You have no clue why he’s in your apartment in as bad shape as he is—he shudders when he falls on you, and you can feel the suction of at least one bullet wound against your arm.

He does some more resistant wobbling and yanks out a knife, which you curse at before batting away easily. Under other circumstances, Scofflaw’s utter incapacity to seriously harm you would be hilarious, but that’s probably because someone would have gotten him so insanely sloshed he would also be dancing stupidly on top of a table wearing a lampshade and women’s stockings.

“It’s okay, Scoff’.” It’s probably better to keep talking, since he seems to be extremely skittish about randomly appearing in your apartment half dead. He pitches himself out of your grip, or he tries to. “Calm down, asshole, I’m trying to  _help_.”

You manage to wrestle him to the kitchen where the light’s better and settle him in a chair. You strip his ruined coat over his feeble physical protest and your hands dance around his frame, pulling out miscellaneous other weaponry, which you pile on the counter safely out of reach. By the time you’ve snagged the last set of keys from his various pockets, Scofflaw is lolling on the chair no longer resisting, eyes closed and breathing shallowly.

His white shirt is stained red and purple, the shadow blood swirling in hazy patterns. There’s a spray of bullet wounds across his torso, through the right pectoral and going down to his left hip, something like six wounds in all. There’s a stab wound in his left shoulder and a slash down his side where someone with a blade caught the Scoundrel flat footed.

“ _Scoff’,_ ” you breathe, horrified. “What did you  _do_?”

He stirs weakly. “Rival gang,” he rasps. “Ambushed me inna… inna fucking restroom…”

You slice off his shirt and push his suspenders over his shoulders so you can get a better look at his back—at least three exit wounds, and another stab wound. You have never seen someone come out of whatever Scofflaw came out of done in as badly as he has still breathing, and through your shock you marvel that he still is. When your hands start trembling, you realize you need help.

You drop the knife on the table and stumble over to the phone. You can’t get Detective’s help—he’d probably kill Scofflaw himself, or delay much-needed medical treatment. You’re mentally shuffling through a list of your questionable back-alley doctors when a slender bit of shadow yanks the receiver out of your hand and slashes through the cord.

“No calls,” Scofflaw whispers, so raggedly it would have broken your heart if you had one. “Inny’ll… fin’ me sooner or later.”

He’s trying to push himself upright, and doing terribly. “Fuck, stop moving,” you say, giving up the phone as a lost cause. “What the hell can I do if you don’t want me bringing in anyone else?”

“Hell if I know,” he gasps, cracking one eye with a faint smile. “I was shooting for home, not here.”

“Fine,” you snarl, getting angry again. He’s being remarkably flippant and the unfocused look in his eyes tells you it’s not because he’s trying to be. “Hey, Scoff’, didja get a concussion too?” you ask to check. He doesn’t respond, and when you slide your fingers through his hair you don’t feel any visible dents or scrapes. It’s probably just the blood loss, then.

You pull out what constitutes your emergency medical kit and get to work after hoisting the heavier man onto the shitty table, which creaks ominously. A few centuries of shady living allowed you to acquire certain skills, and if you’re not army-surgeon standard, you can at least dig out bullets and put stitches in more or less the right place. You just hope that nothing vital was hit even though that looks to be a near certainty, because you can’t do anything about that. Fucking Scofflaw, destroying your phone.

The shadows fizzle where they surround any of the gaping holes in Scofflaw’s flesh. The bleeding looks like it’s slowed to next to nothing. First things first, you start washing off what you can of the mess so that you can see what you’re working with.

The blood and dirt get wiped away. The shadows stay, and you ask Scofflaw about that. He replies hazily something about shadow magic, but you can’t hear too much because he’s dropped to a low mumble. You guess it can’t be too bad, and you set about picking threads out of the wounds before fishing around for the bullets that remain in his body.

You work quickly, half hoping half praying you’re not causing any more damage. The shadows spark when you work with their associative injuries, and the shocks are like static electricity. You work through them with a steady litany of curses and threats.

When you’re done, Scofflaw is hardly breathing. He’s faded to ashy grey, a color you didn’t think a Dersite could get. His hair is soaked with sweat and blood, plastered to his skull, and his skin is cool to the touch. You’re so worried you’re utterly furious you can’t be angrier with him.

You debate moving him to the bed. The table wasn’t long enough and his legs have been dangling off, something not too good but something you deemed a lesser risk than spending forever crouched over him on the floor in worse light. In the end, you drag him to your room and arrange him as gently as possible on the shitty mattress.

You stand vigil over him that night, alone in the dark, fretting over what you could have done or the people you might have called. You find yourself wishing for all sorts of things that you’d never particularly minded before—more money, better contacts, or just more knowledge you guess—and that should make you angry…

…but, you realize, it’s probably something more like despair. And that terrifies you more than everything else that’s happened tonight.


End file.
